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Search in Book Reviews

The ACCU passes on review copies of computer books to its members for them to review.
The result is a large, high quality collection of book reviews by programmers, for programmers.
Currently there are 1918 reviews in the database and more every month.
Search is a simple string search in either book title or book author. The full text search
is a search of the text of the review.

This book is very unusual for an O'Reilly book. It is not
one of their usual authoritative technical books. It is
authoritative but is almost social and philosophical. It is also the
first O'Reilly book I have seen without an animal on the cover. The
book contains fourteen chapters from fourteen very well known names
in the Unix, Linux, web, OSF and GNU world including all the
heroes.

The book is a collection of papers on where Unix came from and how
GNU came about then how Linux came in to the equation. The texts
progress on to how it all developed in to companies' actually making
money and growing with 'free' software. The texts are written by
authoritative people who are (or were) the guiding influence in
their field and it is as much their thoughts andphilosophy as their
technical trials and tribulations.

I had several books to review ahead of this one but once I picked it
up to have a quick look I read it cover to cover! Although some of
the texts cover 'the early days' most of the papers appear to have
been written in the last 6 months and cover incidents and changes
well into 1998. One exception is the reprint of the email debate
from 1992 between Tanenbaum and Torvaldson on the relative merits in
Minix and Linux (one being micro-kernel and the other
monolithic).

The texts give a fascinating (insiders) insight as to why Unix
failed and how and why Linux is rising to replace it (and MS
Windows). However, I recall the time when bubble memory was going to
rule the world so I shall wait and see what happens.

I now understand how and why open sources work despite the fact that
it is counter intuitive in the modern world. Just as bumblebees
still fly. The texts also give an insight into what drives the
people shaping the industry. You may be asking, why does a book on
open sources cost money? Well at£16.50 it is not expensive (for a
computer book) and this book has one other unusual feature. I bought
my own copy. Highly recommended.